A Big Five inventory for children and adolescents: The German version of the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC)

The Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) is a questionnaire measuring the Big Five personality factors in children and adolescents. The development was based on free parental personality descriptions of children (Mervielde & De Fruyt, 1999) to provide a comprehensive personality inventory for children and adolescents. The present study investigates the psychometric properties of the German self- and parent-report versions of the HiPIC in a sample of 223 adolescents aged 11 to 15. Reliability coefficients for the self- and parent-report versions were quite satisfactory. The expected five-factor structure was replicated adequately across judges and proved to be largely invariant across various subsamples. Furthermore, we found a high congruence among the factor structures of the German, the original Flemish, the French and the Italian versions of the questionnaire. The quite satisfactory correspondence between self and parent ratings provides support for the validity of the HiPIC as a self- report measure for adolescents.